Second Life 5

I realized today in Second Life that a lot of the cooler looking items or content all had to purchased with  Linden dollars, which is basically real money. It was a little frustrating because the free content was rather boring and I didn't want to spend money to get the good stuff. Also I thought it was a a little difficult trying to keep up with the different rules in all of the different destinations. In every destination there seemed to be a code of conduct note that popped up on my screen and I had to read and accept it or else I would be kicked out. I actually got kicked out of a destination for who knows what. I am still not sure what I was doing wrong, but I thought that was kind of weird. I can definitely see how Second Life has grown into a financial or business for some of the users.

Second Life 4

I was looking into the history and development of Second Life today. I found a lot of interesting facts about the virtual community and how it started. I thought it was interesting that LindenLabs, the developer of Second Life, didn't include an option for using real money in the community, but after a year of being released to the public LindenLabs decided to put the option for using real money in the community. By 2006 a user had already created a million dollar industry through Second Life. I thought it was interesting that Second Life was able to grow that fast and people were able to gain so much profit from just using the tools made available to them in Second Life. It allows people to use their own ideas and work with the tools given to them. User's can create their own content and sell it to other users for real life money. This could be a hobby for some user's or a full time job for others. I also thought it was interesting how the developers of Second Life changed a lot of things about the virtual community to make it more user friendly. For example, in the beginning of Second Life user's didn't have the option of teleporting to a different destination and now they can. I don't know how I would get around without teleporting in SecondLife because it is so big and there are so many different destinations.

Second Life #3!

While I was on SecondLife today, I took part in that zombie land game that I read about in another students blog. I thought it would be funner then just running around and observing everyone. It was hard at first and the other players in the game did give me a lot of grief about not being good. The rules were a little hard to understand and actually follow because I am not usually a gamer and didn't really understand some of the things they were saying. This made me start thinking of some theories to use about how people act when they are in group settings instead of how they would act when they were just by themselves, which would have followed the identity theory or social identity theory. I am still in the process of deciding for sure what theories would be best to use so I am not sure if I will use this example because I don't really know if the way a person would talk to me on SecondLife would actually be the way that person communicated in real life. 

Second Life Experience 2

As I have been participating in more social activities on Second Life, I have been thinking about what sort of theories would be applicable to the different communication styles or purposes. I was also looking into the different reasons why a person would use Second Life and came across a few. One of those reasons being educational, not only are some universities conducting courses through SecondLife, but in some zones of SecondLife there are courses taught by users to users. These courses are free and some of the ones I saw were various programming languages. I am not sure how these courses are conducted, but it is interesting how virtual communities can be used. Another reason people might turn to Second Life is for the personal or social aspect. Sometimes a person may not have enough time to go out and meet new people so they could just stay in and meet new people at whatever time they wanted. They can also go to different destinations that might have certain codes of conduct that they would like. The last reason I saw would be financial. A lot of the things in the virtual community require the user to pay real money to achieve, for example if you wanted to buy a house you had to spend real dollars to get that. Also, a user can create different objects in the virtual community or different meshes  and sell these to other users for real money. 

Secondlife #1

For my final paper/project I have chosen to write about SecondLife. I thought this tool had the most interaction and communication between people over the internet. I feel like one could see all aspects of online communication in SecondLife. Also, online communities are becoming more and more common as the internet becomes more a part of everyone's daily life. Not only can online communities serve as a place for people to interact, but they can also serve as a place for online learning and people can com together to teach others about subjects they are knowledgeable about. Universities have started using Secondlife as a way to teach classes in a virtual classroom.

E-Learning: MindMeister

1. The topic of this week was E-learning and the tool we used was called MindMeister. MindMeister allows users to create maps for life, school, or just a day. It basically allows a user to plan out whatever they want in a logical order on the computer. It relates to e-learning because user's can create mind maps and then share with other users. Other user's can also edit other's mind maps and the owner of that mind map can either approve or disapprove the changes made. 

2. This tool serves as a variety of things. It allows user's to create maps or outlines of anything they want. User's can keep these maps private or they can share them with other users. A user might share a map if they want to share what their outline of something might be or if they are sharing a schedule for everyone to see. A user can also specify whether they want others to be able edit their mind map or just to be able to read it. MindMeister seemed to make everything a lot easier to read and understand. It made it a lot more simple and daily tasks seemed to be planned out a lot better then if one didn't use MindMeister. 

3. One thing I really liked about the tool was that a user was able to share their mind map, but not only could a user share it they could specify if they wanted the public to be able to edit the map or just to be able to read it. I liked being able to share my map with other people I knew and seeing what they edited. It made the whole experience a lot more fun and more outgoing. I am not sure how I would feel about sharing my maps with everyone because then the public would know my exact class schedule or what errands I had to run on a certain day, if those were the mind maps I was creating. Another thing I liked about MindMeister was that they allowed the user to customize their maps by allowing the user to upload pictures off of their computer, Facebook account, or off the internet. A user could change the font size or color as well. 

4. I didn't have problems with MindMeister at all. I think it was explained in class very well and the website made the tool extremely user friendly. Since it is a fairly simple tool with not many objectives I think the tool was very useful. It allowed many different actions to give the same result. For example, if a user wanted to copy all of the content in a category they could either right click over the highlighted content and copy or there was a specific button on the website for the user to go to as well. 

5. I think MindMeister  could complicate communication, but only if the user accidentally allowed others to edit their mind map. This could lead to some confusion for the user, but it could be easily solved. Other then that, I think MindMeister would help improve communication because it allows users to either give themselves or others a detailed plan about what the user was doing or wanted to do in the future. It also allows a group of people to edit the same map and they could all have their own input. Others could tell which user edited what based on that MindMeister tells the owner of the mind map who is actively editing the map and each change is color coded to match the user. 

6. I really liked MIndMeister and I thought it was an extremely helpful tool. I could see myself using it to create school schedules or work schedules. While I was using it to create the outline I thought it made the paper seem easier to write or at least to plan out. I don't think I would buy the premium membership just because I don't feel like spending money on something I wouldn't necessarily need, but I'll keep using the basic membership!

E-commerce- Flickr

1. How does this tool relate to the topic of the week?

The topic of this week is e-commerece and how it is becoming more popular in society to shop online rather then in stores. E-commerce is a more recent years and was a big jump for retail and other stores that people used to have o go into to buy their products to offer their products online. E-commerce is still a booming industry and is gaining ven more popularity recently. The tool of the week was Flickr. This tool allowed businesses, big and small, to post pictures about their products or their store on the website and tag certain topics, people, cities, or anything in the photo. These tags allow their product to reach a larger audience. 

2. What function does the tool serve?

Flickr allows businesses to put their products, location, or employees online and tag certain things in these pictures. These tags are searchable by users who want to look for things in a certain area or what kind of thing they were looking for. A business can tag things such as colors, clothing, flowers, a certain geographical area, or anything really so that can reach many specific groups of people. It is also free to join Flickr and to have a business on there, but for membership you will be able to see statistics as to how many people visit your profile or see your tags per month. 

3. What did you find most interesting about the tool?

I found the most interesting thing about Flickr would be the tagging option. This seemed to be very important into getting a business's products, services, or location clear to the public. It also allows potential customers to search for exactly what they are looking for and potentially in the an area they are in. They can find images of the product they might want to buy so that they have a better understanding of what it is they might be buying. 

4. What did you find most challenging?

One thing I found challenging about using Flickr would have to be trying to find my way around the site as a customer. I understood how to use the tool as a business trying to attract customers, but I don't understand how a customer and finding these different images with tags. The site seemed to give a user way too many options if you searched something based on a keyword and it was really hard getting to what I really wanted to. I don't think it is a bad thing that Flickr allows access to all of this information, but I think users have to be very specific in what they are looking for. 

5. How does the tool improve or complicate communication?

I think the tool could improve communication based on just that it is good for businesses or organizations trying to get their product available to a lot of different specific groups of people. I also think it could complicate communication because a user doesn't know if the business is actually posting pictures of their product or someone else's product. In class we had that activity where we created a fake business, which made me think of how many other fake businesses are on Flickr or if the photos on some businesses profiles are actually their own products.

6. What is your critique of your experience?

I really liked Flickr and I thought it was pretty diverse in what it offered. It offered businesses a way to spread word about their product or location to people that would be looking exactly for that. It also offered an easier, more direct way for customers to get in contact with businesses that have products that they were specifically looking for.